If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Seeing is not always believing.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.